welcome to Elul

[cellio]

Elul is the month before Rosh Hashana. It started about a week ago. The season of repentance and introspection that characterizes the high holy days doesn't begin on Rosh Hashana; it begins earlier, in Elul. (The actual work of making amends and improving ourselves is year-round, of course.)

Even better than making amends is acting in a way to reduce the amount needed. In that nanosecond between seeing or hearing something and jumping to the "obvious" conclusion and acting on it, we can sometimes stop to consider other explanations. There's a lot of hair-trigger absolutist judging happening in our world today, and a small anecdote I saw on Twitter during this season struck me so I'm sharing it.

I almost yelled at a woman looking at an iPhone during Kol Nidre, but I just said "This is one of the most beautiful prayers you'll ever hear." She saw me looking, and explained she was checking her blood sugar. I wished her a healthier New Year. I finally conquered my snark! - LibbyCone

Even when we think we know all the context, we might not know all the context.

Comments

[madfilkentist]

When I see something on Twitter, I try to always think, "What's really behind this little snippet quoted here?" Avoiding confirmation bias takes practice.

[cellio]

And not just Twitter. We should always be sanity-checking what we read, hear, or even think we see. We don't need to do full-on fact checks for every little thing (degree of rigor aligns with magnitude of the effect), but there should always be a thread running in the back of the brain, so to speak. It's a learned skill that, as you said, requires practice.

[minoanmiss]

This is a well said reminder illustrated with a nifty anecdote. *makes a note of this*

[https://login.ubuntu.com/+id/hsFMttp]

Thanks for this, Monica - this really struck a chord!

I'm just working on an essay on the resources in Proverbs/מִשְלֵי for interpersonal forgiveness (are there any?!), and my sense so far is that its counsels amount to "acting in a way to reduce the amount [of amends] needed". Nice to see the convergence. :)

David / Edinburgh
p.s. your "Yellow" blog is looking lovely.